


Keep On Haunting Me

by Caelys



Category: Peaky Blinders (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Emotional Hurt, Explicit Language, Gen, Heavy Angst, Hurt, Hurt No Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-30
Updated: 2020-12-30
Packaged: 2021-03-10 16:53:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,469
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28430457
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Caelys/pseuds/Caelys
Summary: ‘If you accept this position, you wouldn't have to lie with a man again.’He said and he lied--One tragedy after the next, Lizzie had never imagined her life would turn out this way.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 5





	Keep On Haunting Me

**Author's Note:**

> So this was supposed to be a Lizzie x Tommy one shot, but when I started researching I found out that we have almost no information about Lizzie pre Season 1, so I am here to change that. Yes, I got a little carried away. This story features CANON COMPLIANT VIOLENCE AND THEMES. This story and words I’ve chosen to include here don’t reflect on my views of sex workers.

The bedroom window was opened, so the warm night breeze could get it. Somewhere out dogs were howling. It was distant and very faint, but since the house was silent, it was loud enough for Lizzie to hear.

She was in bed again. Naked, smoking another fucking cigarette. Some of the ashes were falling onto the silk sheets, making tiny holes and essentially ruining the expensive fabrics. And yet she didn’t care.

The same way she didn’t care, what her more wealthier clients were gifting her years ago. If it wasn’t money she didn’t care. All those dresses and jewellery were just for the show. She had to put them just once, so she’d appear grateful.

But she wasn’t. Why would she be grateful? Because those men had decided that if they gave her enough expensive coats and dresses it would make up for their lack of heart. For their inability to express any emotion other than anger. For every single sin that burned their soul.

And while Lizzie pitied them all, she wasn’t any better. What went wrong with her life?

Honestly she wasn’t sure. She used to be an empathetic kid. Trying to bring home every single stray cat she saw on the street... until her mother found them meowing from under her bed. That day Lizzie was sure that her mother’s screams could reach the stars.

_‘If you don’t get rid of those cats right now, you can as well join them on the street!’_

_‘Maybe I will!’_

_‘Go on then!’_

But she never did. Lizzie was too scared to spend a single night out on the street. After all she was just a kid and those stone paved streets were cold.

Unfortunately people were even colder and soon enough she learned that lesson firsthand. The war started and her father was drafted... Or so he said.

A week went by.

Then a month.

And he never wrote them a single letter. First they thought that the post was busy with all those letters they received daily. But after a while they started getting more and more anxious. Was he dead? Buried in an unmarked grave somewhere in France.

But then the women started talking. Those old fucking witches, started pointing fingers at her mother. And they were laughing. Such vile creatures, who had no other work than to make their lives miserable.

Her father had never been drafted. He faked it all so he could leave his family to live with his mistress in the countryside. And it was a foolproof plan, until one of Lizzie’s neighbors visited her relatives and recognized her father.

It was laughable. The other men went to the front to defend the country. To fight for the king. And her father used it as a pretext to abandon his family. It was a disgrace.

Lizzie and her mother were avoided like the plague, like the were at fault. And after a while her mother accepted that the fault was hers. The empty bottles started pilling up at the side of her bed. And with each one she was losing herself further.

First she was crying.

Then she was getting hysterical.

By the third bottle she was getting violent.

One day all the family photos disappeared, only for Lizzie to find her mother burning them on the stove top. She tried to fight her own mother, just to keep a single picture. But with the first slap across the face she was brought back to reality.

Her father was no longer a part of their lives... He might as well have never existed.

Lizzie remembered that damned night as if it happened yesterday. For years she was reliving the horror every single time she closed her eyes.

The smoke. Thick and gray. Creeping up under the door like the slender fingers of the witch she was terrified of as a child.

_‘Mother!’_

_‘MOTHER!’_

Nobody answered. The smoking was slithering like a snake, it was getting to the point where it was getting hard to breathe. A invisible hand holding her throat, the grip getting stronger with each passing second. Lizzie ran to the door. On the other side the heat was unbearable. Red flames creeping up in every direction. And there in the middle of the living room was her mother lying lifelessly.

Lizzie knew what it meant, and yet she ran to her. Shaking her. Trying to wake her up. She needed fresh air. Lizzie had to get her out. And so she dragged her mother’s body through the front door.

Out there were all her neighbors. Silently staring at the burning house. None of them dared to help, so they just watched the destruction as it unfold.

At first Lizzie cursed at them. The were cowards. Fucking cowards. They could have helped, but they choose not to. And their decision cost her everything. Years later she finally understood. They were just mother, trying to care for their children. Of course they would be cowards. Of course they couldn’t help.

Their children were already growing up fatherless, and depriving them from a mother would be too cruel.

And so at the age of sixteen, Elizabeth Stark became utterly alone.

The memory of her first client was another one she tried to repress, but somehow it always managed to slip away.

How he smelled of cheap booze and cigarettes. How his teeth looked rotten, and unfortunately Lizzie was sure that the little pieces in his beard were vomit.

A disgusting old man, whose face haunted her for years. He even didn’t pay much, but it was enough for a bread. That day Lizzie sold herself for one fucking bread.

After the war came the officers. For some reason they were always paying better than average. Lizzie guessed that they were paying her to feel the love they didn’t receive from their wives, due to their falling marriages. Little did they know that if they stopped visiting her their marriages would no longer be falling.

Or maybe, just maybe Lizzie was better. She didn’t need to talk. She didn’t need to care. She just had to fuck and keep them away from remembering. These men needed silence as much as she did. What a mutually beneficial deal.

And then came John, a widower who couldn’t keep his mouth shut. He was different. He didn’t need a silent toy to fuck. He wanted someone to talk to, to spend the night with. He wanted someone to remind him that after the most inhuman experience, he was still a person.

And soon enough John was her favourite client. After all he was just a lonely human, who needed to pay to feel closure, however fucked up that was. And soon enough he mistook that closure for love. He needed someone in his life and he was sure that the whore he was paying was the right choice.

And when Lizzie finally believed him, his family had to ruin it all. Just as that in the matter of a day John was married to a woman he had never met in life. And Lizzie was deprived of the only man who she allowed herself to get close to.

God quickly reminded her that she was there to fuck, not to feel; even if she despised that fact. Or maybe God just liked to fuck with her. Because as quickly the Shelby’s became her curse, they became her blessing.

Lizzie finally had a real job. She became a secretary for the man who stole her happiness. Thomas Shelby.

_‘If you accept this position, you wouldn't have to lie with a man again.’_

He said and he lied. He made her lie with a man, when the business needed that. On the clock she was a secretary, and on call she was a whore.

That was the first of many lies and the one she never forgave.

And now she was in Thomas’s bed. No, not even _his_ bed. They had to fuck in a spare bedroom, because how could her filthy hands touch the bed he used to share with Grace.

By some strange turn of events Lizzie was once again in an empty bed, sleeping with an empty man, this time in an empty mansion.

When Tommy left the room after they were done, it was her signal to go home. He wouldn’t return to her for the rest of the night. Thomas was too busy drinking. Grace’s photograph keeping him all the company he needed.

And Lizzie had to leave. There was no way she could compete with a ghost.

And while she was on her way home, Lizzie couldn’t help but hate herself for returning to the bed of Thomas Shelby.

One more mistake, couldn’t fuck her life more than it already was.


End file.
